China's tariff on US goods looks weak

National Interest:

nless Chinese leader Xi Jinping and his advisors are completely incompetent, there’s only one way to interpret Beijing’s list of U.S. products that will be slapped with retaliatory tariffs on June 1 if the trade war with the United States isn’t somehow deescalated pronto: China increasingly realizes that it’s playing a losing hand in the trade war, and its counter-moves have been made mainly for public consumption in China.

After all, the ostensible purpose of retaliation is inflicting enough pain on the target to change behavior. Therefore, you’d think that most of the new China tariffs would hit products that generate major earnings either for the entire U.S. economy or for key political constituencies (as with the previous import taxes on soybeans). But according to a compilation by Quartz.com, few of the goods scheduled by China to take the biggest (25 percent) tariff hits merit these definitions. Indeed, many aren’t even made in the United States anymore, or certainly not in meaningful quantities, much less exported to any measurable extent to China.
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As mentioned by some of the press coverage, there’s evidence that China has concentrated the tariffs in the agriculture sector and the chemicals sector—obviously two very big parts of the American economy. But if you look in detail at Beijing’s tariff list, what’s most striking is how few major U.S. export categories are affected.

For example, take a look at chemicals (and chemical products). Nineteen sub-sectors in this grouping generated at least $100 million in U.S. exports to China last year. Their total sales to the People’s Republic were just under $5.24 billion—about 44 percent of the total $11.80 billion worth of 2018 American chemical and chemicals-related shipments to China. Three types of chemical products will clearly be subjected to tariffs: makeup and skincare preparations, certain kinds of photographic film, and ethylbenzene. Their total exports to China in 2018 fell slightly short of $745 million. That’s only 6.31 percent of all 2018 U.S. exports to China in these sectors, and less than one half of one percent of America’s $159.13 billion in total chemicals and chemicals-related exports last year.

Numerous other chemicals and chemicals-related sectors have been targeted for China tariffs, too. But taken together, the numbers simply don’t move the needle on a part of the American economy that had a total output hit of $354 billion in 2017 (the last year for which data is available).
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Several major trade products are not on the tariff lists which suggest they are needed by the Chinese more than the tariffs.  China was always in a weak position in the trade war because the trade was so unbalanced.